Will the Plextor PX750UF extern DVD-burner (incl

[eT]

Will the Plextor PX750UF extern DVD-burner (including DVD-RAM!) be bootable on my M200 Tablet PC?

I will have to do a re-install on my M200 soon ...
... so I _do_ need a _bootable_ DVD-burner!

The Plextor is pleasing: Plextor is reknown for it's quality, for it's capability to read all sort of audio-CD's (for my own private audio-CD-to-MP3-HomeServer-project) ... and it comes in black, fitting my Eizo L465-K black TFT :)) ... BUT: will it be bootable on my M200 is the crucial question.

Any insight?!

Thanks in advance!
eT

[eT]

well, perhaps more generall question:

did plextor-dvd-writers normally work or not as bootable device for the M200?

thanks.
eT

I don't know about the bootable thing, but may have another solution which works fine for me. I myself have a Portege 3500, with a DVD-player, but the PC-CARD to connect it, is not supported by the BIOS.

So I had to devise another way to install XPTE on the laptop.
What I did is install XPTE from the HD. The following steps are necessary to do this:

- Under your current installation, make sure that you have at least two partitions (use PartitionMagic or FIPS (http://www.igd.fhg.de/~aschaefe/fips/) ). In any case, the second partition has to be in FAT32. (that's the one on which Win is NOT installed). Make sure that the size of that partition is about 3 GB, setup will need this.
- Copy the entire contents of both XPTE CD's to that second partition.
- Get a Windows 98 bootable floppy disk and put SmartDrive (smartdrv.exe) onto it (!) (can be found on a Win98/ME install or floating somewhere on the internet). SmartDrive is used to speed up the copying of files, otherwise it will take 5 hours to install XP...
- Boot from that floppy using a USB floppy drive (which are always supported, as is my experience)
- Use fdisk to remove the Win partition (the first one) and create a new first (active) FAT32 partition. It is important that this partition becomes the first/active one, because otherwise Win will be installed on D: ...
- Run smartdrv.exe and then run i386\winnt.exe from the first XPTE CD (which is now on the second partition)
- The setup will now ask for the CD, just enter the directory where the install files are located (subdir i386, i think)
- It will copy some files and then the 'real' setup will start
- When you can select on which partition you want to install Win, be sure to select the first FAT32 one, just created with fdisk. On the next screen, select convert to NTFS. Be sure to keep the partition where the install files are located!
- Simply follow the rest of the setup and you're done!

I myself now have 3 partitions: one of 3 GB with the setup files, and the rest cut in half: one for Win and programs, and one for Docs. That way, I can easily install Win again without having to backup my documents.

Hope this helps!

Whoops, wrong button...

[eT]

interesting, thanks.

but still, as I need a DVD-burner-drive anyway, my general & specific question for plextor would be nice to know.

thanks
eT